Burning Man seeks 5 year permit

For the past 20 years, the playa has been home to the annual counterculture art festival. Desert silence is replaced with costumed desert craziness, culminating with the burning of the towering effigy of "The Man." Last year's event, climaxing over Labor Day weekend, attracted more than 51,000 people to the remote playa about 120 miles northeast of Reno. The festival's organizer, Black Rock City LLC, is asking the federal Bureau of Land Management to issue a five-year permit to continue Burning Man on about 4,400 acres of public land from 2011 to 2015. It would increase the number of people potentially attending the event to 60,000. Can the playa handle five more years of Burning Man? Is there a tipping point beyond which it can no longer withstand the impacts of what, at least for a week, becomes one of Nevada's largest cities? Black Rock City representatives, who pride themselves on the motto of "leave no trace," say yes. Some critics say no, and they worry the long-term ecological impacts of the festival might be irreversible. BLM officials say that while there are impacts to the land, the playa generally appears to heal itself...more